Screening of Animation Film The Tower at Reel Palestine's Annual Film Festival in UAE

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Screening of Animation Film The Tower at Reel Palestine's Annual Film Festival in UAE


Director Mats Grorud's animation film The Tower will participate in the 5th Reel Palestine's annual film festival in the UAE (18 - 26 January). The film will be screened on Saturday, January 19, at 03:00 pm and Friday, January 25, at 05:00 pm (GMT +4).

Reel Palestine is an annual film festival showing a selection of alternative Palestinian films in the UAE at Warehouse 421 in Abu Dhabi and Cinema Akil, the independent cinema platform that brings quality films from across the world to audiences in the UAE.
Recently, The Tower took part in the London Palestine Film Festival, Palestine Cinema Days, Annecy International Animated Film in France, Arab Film Festival in Famac, France, and Busan International Film Festival.

Written and directed by Mats Grorud, The Tower features the voices of Romina Adl Kasravi, Mohamed Bakri, Najila Said, and Morad Hassan. The film is a French-Swedish-Norwegian coproduction that is distributed in the Arab world by MAD Solutions.

Wardi, an eleven-year-old Palestinian girl, lives with her whole family in the refugee camp where she was born. She learns about her family's history through stories told to her by three earlier generations of refugees.

Mats Grorud is a Norwegian director and animator who studied Animation at Volda University College. He complimented his animation career with studies in Denmark, Beirut and Beijing. Mats directed the short films Santa Klaus and My Grandmother Beijing, in addition to animation films Kaja Polmar (2006) and Piotr Sapegin's Grandpa is a raisin (2006).

Today, Mats runs his own company called Nubbsjangs Productions, where he develops his own projects, does commissioned work and teaches animation. He has also worked on several documentary projects. In 2007, Grorud started working on his debut feature animated documentary film, The Tower, along with producer Frank Søbstad at Tenk.tv.